Given that we celebrate Independence Day this weekend, I thought a few charts about the Fourth of July UFOs in New York would be fun.

While working on my presentation for the 2016 MUFON Symposium, I had the opportunity to work with both of the national UFO databases: NUFORC and MUFON. Some of the interesting reports I had the opportunity to run were quite eye-opening.

To start with, in New York, peak months for UFO sightings are July and August. Using my National UFO Magnitude Study, I found that for my study sample from 2001 through 2015, both months were neck and neck, with July topping out at 728 sightings over August’s 716 sightings.

What I found interesting is that since 2008, the Fourth of July is the single highest UFO sighting-report day in within the month of July. Also fascinating was the fact the while 2010 through 2014 had relatively stable sighting numbers. 2015 presented doubled sighting tallies from the previous five years.

Some New York UFO researchers were intrigued and asked if the sightings were evenly distributed across the state. As it turns out, 78 percent of Fourth of July UFO sightings occurred in only 10 of New York’s 62 counties, as evidenced by the chart. All of the counties shown are known to be high UFO sighting counties. The remaining 22 percent of sightings are lightly sprinkled across the state.

What surprised me were the shapes that were reported. Another UFO investigation suggested that the sightings were perhaps misidentified as fireworks. Yet on the shapes chart, the majority of objects reported were anything but.

Have a Happy and Safe Holiday weekend.